Abstract

The only previous special issue of the IJNS devoted to mental health nursing was edited by Annie Altschul and Tony Butterworth in 1995 (Altschul and Butterworth, 1995), both of whom did so much to advance the discipline; I feel privileged to have been asked to edit this next special issue some 12 years later. I, personally, have been involved in the mental health field both as a practitioner, a teacher and a researcher for some 30 years now and during that time mental health care (and thus nursing) has changed radically: many large psychiatric hospitals have been closed, care and treatment has become more multi-professional and also more evidence-based; the epithet ‘patient’ has largely disappeared and has been replaced by ‘clients’ or ‘service-users’ reflecting important changes in the power dynamics between mental health professionals and people who receive mental health services. Bye and large these changes have been beneficial ones but system change can lead to unanticipated challenges, for example, the ever increasing numbers of people in prison with mental health disorders in the United States has been directly attributed to the closure of psychiatric hospitals (Abrahamson, 1972 M.F. Abrahamson, The criminalization of mentally disordered behavior: possible side-effects of a new mental health law, Hospital and Community Psychiatry 3 (1972), pp. 101–105.Abrahamson, 1972)–this is a scenario provoking much discussion now in other countries such as England and Canada. The strong relationship between mainstream mental health provision and prisoners is highlighted in this issue by Black et al. (2007).

Item Type:

Article

Additional Information:

The only previous special issue of the IJNS devoted to mental health nursing was edited by Annie Altschul and Tony Butterworth in 1995 (Altschul and Butterworth, 1995), both of whom did so much to advance the discipline; I feel privileged to have been asked to edit this next special issue some 12 years later. I, personally, have been involved in the mental health field both as a practitioner, a teacher and a researcher for some 30 years now and during that time mental health care (and thus nursing) has changed radically: many large psychiatric hospitals have been closed, care and treatment has become more multi-professional and also more evidence-based; the epithet ‘patient’ has largely disappeared and has been replaced by ‘clients’ or ‘service-users’ reflecting important changes in the power dynamics between mental health professionals and people who receive mental health services. Bye and large these changes have been beneficial ones but system change can lead to unanticipated challenges, for example, the ever increasing numbers of people in prison with mental health disorders in the United States has been directly attributed to the closure of psychiatric hospitals (Abrahamson, 1972 M.F. Abrahamson, The criminalization of mentally disordered behavior: possible side-effects of a new mental health law, Hospital and Community Psychiatry 3 (1972), pp. 101–105.Abrahamson, 1972)–this is a scenario provoking much discussion now in other countries such as England and Canada. The strong relationship between mainstream mental health provision and prisoners is highlighted in this issue by Black et al. (2007).